For many years gutters have been provided with screens or guards to prevent leaves and other debris from falling into the gutter. Though the screens successfully exclude a great majority of the debris, it is still necessary to have access to the interior of the gutter for cleaning and other purposes. For easy access, gutter screens have been provided with hinges to allow the screen to be pivoted away from the gutter, and to allow the screens to be easily replaced.
The difficulty with hinged gutter screens is that the screens are sometimes inadvertently caused to pivot to the open position so that the screens do not protect the gutter. The inadvertent, or unintentional, opening of the screen has various causes, including such things as limbs sliding down a roof, strong winds, and small animals such as birds, squirrels and like. As a result, the source of the problem is not truly controllable.
The prior art hinged gutter screens have included gutter screens that are hinged from the edge of the gutter adjacent to the eave so the screens will tend to stay closed, but elaborate structure is required to support such a screen since one would generally not place nails or screws into the roof itself. The prior art also includes hinged gutter screens having spring means to bias the screen to a closed position. While a sufficiently strong spring may prevent the inadvertent opening of a gutter screen, such an arrangement would render the intentional opening extremely difficult since the screen must be held at all times to prevent the unintentional closing of the screen. Also, the addition of springs and like to a hinge renders the arrangement unduly complex and significantly raises the cost of the hinge.